City Deal Board Justification For Its Poor Choices

Having made what some of think are the worst decisions for the Options for the A428 Busway, the 3 Voting Members of the Board have attempted to justify their reasoning in an article published in the Cambridge News on 18th October 2016.

Cllr Burkitt sent District Councillors the full text, which I reproduce in this article

9 reasons the Cambourne-to-Cambridge busway must go ahead

Last Thursday, the three of us unanimously voted to push ahead with the next stage of the project to create a fast and reliable busway from Cambourne to Cambridge. Why? For three principal reasons: to enable the building of badly-needed private and affordable homes in our region; to protect Cambridge’s Green Belt; and to be fair to our fellow residents in the District by giving them high-quality public transport access to Cambridge’s jobs, shops and leisure activities. Those are bold statements that a number of people have questioned, so we’ll explain the logic.

1. We need 1,700 new homes a year

Whether we like it or not, Cambridge and Cambridgeshire are growing fast, and are set to continue growing. Our businesses are leading-edge and our employment levels are high, making us an attractive place to live, work and study. Between the two censuses in 2001 and 2011, the population of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire grew by 14% from 240,000 to 275,000, and the number of private households they lived in grew by 12% from 95,000 to 107,000 (all numbers rounded). An independent study took these numbers forward another two decades, forecasting that the number of households will rise by 34,000 by 2031, requiring slightly over 1,700 houses to be built every year, year-in-year-out, for 20 years.

2. Even if we stopped any new-comers, we would still around 850 homes a year

About half of this forecast increase will be “home grown” – we in this region are (or are hoping to) have babies, move out of our parents’ homes, and live longer. The rest is mainly due to people moving here from the rest of the UK; only a small minority is movement from abroad. Some in our area may not like this ‘migration’ from the rest of the UK or abroad, but even if it was eliminated, we’d still need 850 new homes, year-in-year-out, just to satisfy our own home-grown needs.

3. Saving the Green Belt

One option is to ‘release’ more land from the Green Belt round Cambridge. A lot has been released over the past decade – think of Trumpington Meadows, North West Cambridge, Cambridge East, etc. We could keep going. The North Barton Road Landowners Group thinks that the West Fields could take 1,400 new houses; other developers are advocating sites at Trumpington, southwards towards Shelford, north at Fen Ditton, and south east between the Babraham Park & Ride and Fulbourn.

But the Councils disagree with all these sites in the Cambridge Green Belt. Instead, much of their “Local Plan” for where the new houses should go is focussed on creating so-called “new communities” (i.e. new towns and large villages) on a satellite basis round Cambridge, most of these on brownfield sites. In March this year, City Councillors approved this strategy unanimously (39–0), and District Councillors by a majority of 41–1.

Think of Northstowe, now at last getting going, where up to 10,000 homes are planned for the former Oakington Barracks. And Waterbeach New Town, partly built on the former barracks, which could take 9,000 homes. And Bourne Airfield: 3,500 homes. All would be on large, available, mostly brownfield sites. And the Cambourne West development, which could add up to 2,400 homes to Cambourne. These are all big enough to be “sustainable” in themselves, meaning that they will justify local infrastructure; secondary as well as primary schools; a good number of shops, doctors and other facilities; community centres; etc. And they will have land allocated for ‘employment sites’, where offices and light industrial units will go.

4. The numbers of commuters into Cambridge will rise – cycling is not an option for them all

But some – many – of their residents will have jobs in Cambridge, and will therefore need to commute to Cambridge. They are too far out for a bike to be a realistic option for all but the fittest. And there’s no way our roads could cope with all that additional car commuting, or enable that number of cars to park in Cambridge. So they need good quality bus provision, where ‘good quality’ means fast, frequent, certain journey times, staring early in the morning and finishing late at night, on modern eco-friendly buses with WiFi, smart/tap-in-tap-out ticketing, GPS monitoring, cheaper faze zones, and all the modern technology now available.

5. Many people would love to live in Cambridge, but can’t afford it

Let’s not forget, also, that many of the residents of these new villages/towns would love to live in Cambridge – if only they could afford the City’s house prices. And that many need affordable housing, which these new areas will provide. It would be socially inequitable, and one could go so far as to say despicable, if those lucky enough to be able to afford to live in Cambridge’s affluent areas were so selfish that they denied those who have to live 5–15 miles away the opportunity to commute in to access jobs in Cambridge.

6. The Local Plans for housing need to be judged ‘sound’ by an Inspector

The Local Plans that avoid building in the Green Belt need to be found “sound” by an independent Government Inspector. In May last year, she wrote to the Councils reminding them that “if development is to be directed to new settlements rather than the edge of the urban area, it needs to be clear that the challenges of making such development as sustainable as possible have been addressed, in particular infrastructure requirements and sustainable transport options”. At that time, she felt that there was a “lack of evidence available” which “does not provide any reassurance that the Plans will deliver sustainable development”. That’s a very serious comment, and explains why the City Deal has been working hard on advancing the Cambourne-to-Cambridge busway project over the past 20 months.

7. The City Deal is already re-thinking some elements

We’re aware that many of the City Deal’s proposals have attracted opposition and – let’s admit it – anger from many residents. In response, we’ve already said that there will be a full review of some aspects, including the Peak-time Congestion Control Points (PCCPs).

8. We must push on with the busway

But the Cambourne-to-Cambridge busway falls into a different category and we are determined to continue planning for it, and then put those plans to more consultations and a public enquiry. This is because it is inextricably linked to the Local Plans for housing, the creation of new towns/settlements/communities mainly on brownfield sites 5–15 miles from Cambridge, to the preservation of the Cambridge Green Belt, and to the equity and fairness of enabling our fellow residents living away from the City to have the ability to commute in to get to work, shop or party.

Some people have said that we should pause the City Deal. As explained, we are going to review some of it – most particularly, the PCCPs. But the Cambourne-to-Cambridge busway cannot be paused, because no-one, and that includes the Government, can pause the Local Plan process. In a recent speech, Theresa May said that this country needs to “make big decisions on – and invest in – our infrastructure” and that “we need the vision and determination to see it through”. She said we should “spread wealth and prosperity around the country” but in our case she could have said “county”. Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Local Communities, went further, saying in a speech on housing that “local leaders must be prepared to make difficult calls, even if they’re unpopular” and quoting Harold Macmillan as saying 90 years ago that “housing is not a question of conservatism or socialism, it’s a question of humanity.”

9. The busway will protect the Green Belt

To those who say we will destroy Cambridge’s Green Belt we say that exactly the opposite is the case: that the only way to save Cambridge’s Green belt is to allow high-quality public transport through the green belt. To those who prefer light rail we say: where would you put it? Probably along exactly the same Catchment Area as we are currently looking at. To those who want tunnels we say: they may work for cities with populations of several million, but they are far too expensive for a region of our size.

So last week, we voted to keep pushing-on with the Cambourne-to-Cambridge bus project, in order to help get the Local Plan approved; to get new communities build on brownfield sites; to thereby save the Cambridge Green Belt; and to give our fellow residents a high-quality public transport route to access Cambridge’s jobs, shops and leisure activities.

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All the options for the new busway explained:

We have agreed a “Catchment Area” for the busway to go: think of this as a shaded area on a map, in some places about 100 yards wide, in others perhaps ¼ mile wide. We have instructed the Transport Officers to spend the next six months, working with outside experts and consultants, to assess where exactly within that Catchment Area the bus route would best be put: in technical terms, what the best “Route Alignment” is. Working west to east:

between Caldecote, past Hardwick and along to the Madingley Mulch roundabout, there’s a wide gap between the A428 and the St Neots Road, and Officers are about 70–80% confident that an off-road busway can be put in that gap; the fall-back is south of Hardwick, which would have environmental concerns;

from the Madingley Mulch roundabout to the M11, we have asked officers to look at an off-road route in between the A1303 (Madingley Hill) and Coton Village. We of course understand the feeling of residents along Madingley Hill and in the village of Coton, but (see Map 1) the way that the side of the hill slopes and folds suggests that it should be possible to find a line where the busway is invisible from the top and bottom of the hill for most of its route. Some have challenged this route, saying that, instead, bus lanes could be put along the existing road on Madingley Hill; so, to settle the matter, we have commissioned an independent firm to carry out a neutral feasibility study into this alternative, which will be made public; and

on the east side of the M11, it is too early in the process to select an exact route, which can only be done after all the analysis is complete. But we hear the “Save the West Fields” campaign loud and clear, and the University has been clear that it would prefer it to go along Charles Babbage Way in the built up area of the West Cambridge site (which is due to have 14,000 people working there, if its plans go ahead), which would avoid some and perhaps all of the West Fields. See Map 2.

The number of buses currently envisaged is nine an hour; three would turn left and go through North West Cambridge and Darwin Green to the Science Park and Cambridge North Station; and six would go to the centre of Cambridge, three of which would go on to Adddenbrooke’s and the Biomedical Campus (unless and until a “Western Orbital” can be created). But we would not be surprised if the Cambourne-to-Cambridge busway proves in time to be as popular as the existing Guided Bus, which now has over 3.7 million passenger journeys a year, so in due course there will probably be more buses than that.

Some have questioned the £140m cost. But if it gets 3.7 million passenger journeys a year – and it may well get more, as the settlements along its route will have more residents than currently live along the existing busway – and if we stretch the cost over 30 years (a time-period often used for these sorts of purposes), that’s about £1.26 per journey, which seems reasonable to us.

The Madingley Road Park & Ride is a good asset, but suffers from being too far into the City, so we are proposing a second one by Madingley Mulch, perhaps partly at Crome Lea. Last week, in response to comment from the Assembly and Local Liaison Forum, we selected a modified site for further analysis, different from the one that Officers had initially recommended, not so far down the hill towards Coton. And we will benchmark that against an alternative site at Scotland Farm, by the turning off the A428 to Dry Drayton – see Map 3.